From 650 to 740 (48q/44v)

[kadiep]

I have to admit that I've been creepin' hard on this forum for quite some time but haven't contributed much. Better late than never, right? My hope is that this debrief will encourage anyone who reads it. But before I begin, a huge THANK YOU to everyone who posts on this forum.

Here's a little background info about me--I'm 25 years old Asian-American male who currently works in IT. I graduated from Pepperdine University with a 3.0 (Economics and Political Science). Didn't take that many quantitative courses in college, and the ones I took (Calc 3, stats, econometrics, etc.) I didn't do too hot on. To say that I underachieved would be an overstatement. After college I worked in non-profit and education, tutoring and teaching children. The 2 years I spent working with elementary and middle school students helped me stay sharp in math, especially since the math concepts tested on GMAT rarely exceed the ones taught in middle school. Why did I decide to take the GMAT in the first place? For several reasons, although none of them are very common. First off, I was laid off by the school I had been teaching at around mid-Oct. With nothing to do but apply for jobs, which is hard to do for 8 hours a day, I decided to take the GRE. I prepped for two weeks and then took the test. Scored a terrible 1130. This pissed me off and motivated me to take the GMAT. Why the GMAT? I've been considering MBA, MPA, and MaCC programs. All three require or accept the GMAT.

After blowing the GRE, I decided I would settle for nothing less than a 700 on the GMAT. At first, I thought perhaps I was being a little too optimistic given my performance on the GRE and in college. But who you were doesn't have to determine who you are and who you are doesn't have to determine who you become.

So, around the end of November, I began researching prep programs and came across this website. After reading many positive reviews about MGMAT, I signed up for the prep class, which was scheduled to begin a week later. One week later, I found out that the class had been postponed until Feb. Since MGMAT had already sent me all the materials, I started reviewing the material so that when the class began, I would be ahead of the game. One month later, I decided to just switch over to a self-guided study program since I had already over half of the strategy guides and felt pretty confident in my ability to learn the material and stay motivated.

Enough storytelling, here's what I did:
Prior to any studying, I read Eric's blog and three debriefs (Twinsplitter, Ursela, and NGUFO). All four provided amazing insight into the world of GMAT studying, but it was NGUFO that lit a fire under my ass and gave me the inspiration to stop being so damn lazy. I started off by studying anywhere from 4-6 hours a day, 6 days a week. After two weeks, I quickly realized that I would burn out if I kept that pace. I reduced my hours down to 2-3 hours a day, and eventually stopped studying on the weekends. Moreover, I took an entire week off from studying around the beginning of Feb. because I had accepted an offer for a job in CA, and had to pack up and drive from NC to CA immediately.

It took me a little over 2 months to get through all of MGMAT's books. After finishing the books, it took me a little over a month to complete all the problems in OG12, OG Verbal Review, and OG Quant. Review. I made flashcards throughout the process but never referred to them. Following Eric's advice, I also blogged pretty frequently until I got the job. It's much harder to maintain a blog when employed so kudos to all who are able to. Although I had access to all of MGMAT's course materials, I never watched any of the online lectures or completed any of the labs (save the SC splitting and re-splitting one). I did, however, find the OGC Plus to be EXTREMELY helpful. I didn't work on my AWA's until yesterday, and all I did was read a few essays and memorize 2 templates.

G-day: Got to the testing center 15 minutes before my test. After I checked in, I proceeded to stretch every muscle in my body. I was pretty calm the entire time, probably because of the confidence I have gained in the last month from my practice CAT scores. The essay prompts weren't too hard and I had enough time to write and proofread. Took a break to use the restroom and swished some water in my mouth. First up, quant. I managed to get through all the problems, while only guessing on a handful. I was a bit distracted during this portion of the test since I really had go to the bathroom. QUICK TIP: if you have a small bladder, definitely limit your fluid intake. I thought i was going to explode! Next up was verbal. only got tripped up on one CR question that contained a very confusing argument structure and one RC question that had a specific detailed I missed on my first read through. Other than that, verbal was exactly as I imagined it would be. Overall, GMAT Quant was a lot easier than MGMAT's Quant and about the same as OG and verbal was on par with MGMAT and OG. GMAT Prep is pretty much identical to both in difficulty. I never was able to finish the quant on MGMAT but always did on GMAT Prep. After answering my last SC question, I felt extremely confident that I had scored in the 700s. After filling in the 4 pages of questions, I closed my eyes for a moment, said a quick prayer, and clicked to see my score. 740. Couldn't be happier. I pumped my fists in the air, as many before me have done, and went to have dim sum.

Dang, I was planning on writing about specific strategies that worked for me or methods that worked for me but there are way to many posts on here with amazing advice. Therefore, I will just hit some key points and be done with it. After four months of GMAT, I'm ready to celebrate and relax. So instead, I'm just going to bullet-point some things that helped me A LOT.

-Going through all OG problems
-Focus on your area of weakness.
-Taking as many practice tests as possible (although not many as some on this forum)
-Eating extremely healthy and exercising daily (running, yoga, and rock-climbing)
-Making flashcards (even though I didn't refer to them, the process of writing them out helped a lot
-Staying consistent with studying
-Going out the entire week prior to my GMAT...some friends from out of town came in so I had no choice =) This actually helped a lot. I was way less stressed than I would have been.
-Going back and re-doing ALL the problems I missed in OG and practice CAT (both immediately after and a couple weeks later)
-Not being a lazy ass
-CONFIDENCE CONFIDENCE CONFIDENCE. I listened to Kanye's "Can't Tell Me Nothing" probably 1000x since I started studying

Moral of the story? Even if you stunk it up in college and did poorly on another standardized test, there's always hope. Nothing is impossible. Just don't be lazy and stay confident and hopeful.

Now, I just have to think about what to do with this score. I already got accepted to USC's MPA program despite my low GRE score. Decisions, decisions...

MGMAT CAT 1 (12/5/10): 650 (44q/35v)
MGMAT CAT 2 (2/5/11): 680 (41q/41v)
GMAT Prep CAT 1 (2/26/11): 740 (49q/42v)
MGMAT CAT 3 (3/11/11): 700 (46q/39v)
MGMAT CAT 4 (3/15/11): 730 (45q/45v)
GMAT Prep CAT 2: (3/16/11): 730 (don't have breakdown)
Real GMAT (3/19/11): 740 (48q/44v)

[vineeshp]

Congrats buddy!

[rohu27]

Congratulations. thats an awesome score.
How relative was the verbal part of mail exam to the one we see on OG? (SC,CR and RC all)
im sure it would have been at a higher level, but still wanted an opinion.

[AIM GMAT]

Congratss , nice debrief . Also congrats for the call . So are you gonna join or apply thru GMAT ? I guess its an obvious answer .

Good luck with your apps .

[nehs]

Congrats on yr score!

[kadiep]

@ rohu27 OG verbal was on par with actual test. I focused most of my energy on verbal since that was the area that I had the most room for improvement.

@AIM Destroyer I will definitely try to use my GMAT score to sweeten up that financial aid package to USC's MPA Program. =)

To add to my debrief, I found the following books extremely helpful--

1. MGMAT Sentence Correction Strategy Guide
2. MGMAT Number Properties
3. MGMAT Word Translations

None of the books mentioned above should be a surprise to anyone as they are recommended by almost everyone on this forum. For me, the least help guide was the RC guide. My theory on RC is that you can only get better at RC by reading more and solving RC problems. Perhaps the guide would be helpful for a non-native english speaker but I cannot verify that. Also, in the last week of my preparation, I picked up the PowerScore CR guide from a friend since I was missing the hardest CR questions. It was pretty helpful but I don't think I managed to get the most out of it since I picked it up so late in my preparation. If you have a choice between MGMAT CR and Powerscore, go with the latter.

I also want to add that nothing matters more than quality studying. 1 hour of focused studying beats 4 hours of unfocused studying any day. if you study too much, you will get a taste of the law of diminishing returns. Instead of focusing on quantity, focus more on quality. For example, take 5 problems from the same problem type that are challenging for you and complete them no matter how long it takes you. On the ones you answered correctly, figure out how you can attack the same type of problem faster the next time you encounter it. On the ones you answered incorrectly, figure out what caused you to make the mistake (concept error?, carelessness?) and eliminate that. Study the pattern of problems that you consistently miss.

it was pretty easy to study for the GMAT when I was unemployed. Two months into my studies I got a full time job, which completely changed my approach. Instead of spreading out my studies between two sessions (one before and one after lunch), I did the same amount of work in one session. For the first week, I swtiched off between doing a couple hours of GMAT before work to studying right after work. I found that I was most effective in the mornings, since I was always way too tired after work. This might be different for you.

if your quant. score is already relatively high compared to your verbal score, focus 70% of your energy on verbal. You can get a still 700 without blowing away the quant section but you CANNOT get a 700 if you stink up the verbal, no matter how amazing your quant score is.

Lastly, the most important lesson that I learned from the quant section of MGMAT Practice CATs is how to let go of my pride. I never managed to complete the quant section on my MGMAT CATs. The hard questions were extremely hard and took up a lot of time. However, I always let my pride get in the way during those practice tests and would not give up on questions. This caused me to run out of time at the end and to have to blindly guess on the remaining 3 or so questions. On the real GMAT, I prepared myself to give up on questions that were too challenging. I ended up giving up on two questions (i forgot what type) within 30 seconds and making educated guesses on both. This gave me to have enough time to solve the final 3 questions, which were very difficult, and double check my work throughout the test.